About Us

Butterfly Love came into being one sunny afternoon in June of 1991, on Pittsburgh's North Side. After selling out of our first batch of tie dyes at the Pittsburgh Arts Festival, and coming up with the rent, a light came on.

Wanting to travel the country to share a room with and bask in the sounds of our favorite musicians, a group of friends came together to hatch a plan to fund our adventures. Little did we know at the time what that would lead to. Priorities, time and miles seperated some of those friends, and left Alan and Rae to regroup and find our way.

Through endless experimentation, and hard work, Butterfly Love trudged on. We started out in a tiny apartment in the Homestead area of Pittsburgh, wholesaling to stores on the University of Pittsburgh campus, and Pittsburgh's culturally diverse South Side, as well as a mom & pop shop in Edinboro,Pa. Butterfly Love would set up at local art shows, and hit the road to sell in some of the bigger musical scenes of the Grateful Dead, Phish, and Widespread Panic, picking up wholesale accounts along the way.Butterfly Loves first opportunity to showcase our tapestries was at the Birmingham Lofts for a Rusted Root show in 1992.

After relocating to Ohio, and starting a family, it was clear that our lives were about to change. Rae had been creating hemp masterpieces for some time, and began pushing the boundaries of the hemp work on the scene. As opportunities opened up for us in that area, and a chance encounter with a importer/exporter who wanted to swap some merchandise, much to Alan's hesitation, it turned out to be a good thing, and we began to carry other products than just what we made ourselves. This would lead to a 9 year stint in a brick & mortar shop open to the public everyday, a place in which we intended to bring the scene closer to our home. Wanting to create a warm atmosphere open to all peoples, where everyone can be themselves, and enjoy an outer reflection of what grew inside of us, we played on our own terms, turning people on to the soundtrack of our life, and the bands that inspired us the most.

Our tapestries began to find places to hang, as more and more bands and festivals began to call on us, and our dye work can be found on some of the scenes biggest stages.